Join us for Unbound Live at the Birmingham Library Theatre from 7pm on 10th July.

Pitching/performing will be George Chopping, Stevyn Colgan, Robert Llewellyn and Adrian Teal.

“The authors will be going head-to-head pitching to raise funding for their book ideas, in a cross between an election hustings and a literary Dragons’ Den. Listen to the pitches, the extracts, the carefully framed arguments, the wit , the passion, the pleading and then you - the potential reader - can decide which books you’d like to see published and pledge for them on the night.”

More details about each of the 4 authors, the event and how to get tickets: here.

Unbound author, Stevyn Colgan (whose book, Constable Colgan’s Connectoscope is being crowd-funded for publication - find out more about how that works here), has written a great round-up of Unbound Live no.3…

Unbound Live 3 

Le Baron at The Embassy Mayfair in London was the venue last night for Unbound Live 3; an evening of readings, talks and general tomfoolery by a bunch of authors who all have books either funded or part-funded with Unbound Publishing. You get to Le Baron by walking through a set of plush leather-covered doors and descending a staircase. Once you get downstairs, you find a cosy cellar club - very cool, very sophisticated - the kind of place where beat poets have throw-downs and B-list celebs hold birthday parties for their chihuahuas. The first thing that greets you as you walk in the door is a six feet tall sculpture of Mickey Mouse in bright pink fibreglass. Good grief. I’m told it’s a Jeff Koons (it doesn’t look like it to me - it kind of looks more like a Ron English - but I will track down the artist). All I know is that it’s very very scary. And just a little bit humbling.

The second thing I spotted was this notice behind the bar …

… which I immediately took a photo of. Many private clubs do, of course, have a no photo policy. It’s nice to have little havens where the paparazzi are politely invited to feck off. However, because this was an organised event and not a normal members night, I could snap away with impunity. So I did. And here are a few of the pictures I took.

The evening started with a rousing introduction from Unbound co-founder John Mitchinson followed by Mr Robert Llewellyn reading from his Utopian novel News from Gardenia. It’s a lovely book - I’ve read mine already - which has a genuinely positive view of the future. Robert gives us a story in which a chap from the present day is thrown 200 years into the future but, rather than the usual post-apocalyptic or dystopian societies so beloved of Hollywood and sci-fi novelists, in this future we got it right. The book shows us how things could be if we make the right choices now about technology, fuel, even how we choose to live our lives. As you’d expect from someone with Robert’s CV, his reading was funny, animated and great to listen to. But could I wheedle any snippets from him about the new series of Red Dwarf? Could I smeg.

Click here for the rest of the review and many more pictures…

If you’re at the Hay festival today, don’t forget to catch Unbound Live (with our authors Katy Brand, Jessica Jones, George Chopping and Hardeep Singh Kohli) today at 2:30 in the Sky Arts Studio.

Katy Brand at Unbound Live.
You can click here to find out more about the book, Brenda Monk is Funny, and how you can get involved in its publication.

For more videos of the event go to: www.youtube.com/unboundvideos

Come and see Chris Yates in conversation with Unbound founder Dan Kieran (talking about Yates’s new book, Nightwalk) at the Southbank Centre on 25th May.

Click here to find out more…

Robert Llewellyn’s speech at the launch party for his new book, News From Gardenia. Available to pre-order now from Unbound.

The next Unbound Live event (you can read Intelligent Life’s review of our last one here) will be on Monday 4th June at the Hay Festival.
Tickets are only £6.25 and you can get them from here. Read on to find out more about the event…

UNBOUND LIVE!

The award winning crowd-funded publisher Unbound, launched at Hay last year, celebrates its first birthday with a live event unlike anything else at the festival. Join a panel of Unbound authors competing to win the approval of the crowd to raise funding for their book ideas, in a cross between an election hustings and a literary Dragons’ Den. Featuring super-smart comedian Katy Brand, controversial polymath Jonathan Meades, novelist and developmental psychologist Charles Fernyhough, cult perfomance poet George Chopping, the inimitable Glaswegian Sikh writer, cook and performer, Hardeep Singh Kohli and others.

www.unbound.co.uk

Lucy Farmer’s great review of last week’s Unbound Live event, in Intelligent Life :

On Tuesday night, Unbound Live took over Le Baron nightclub in London’s Mayfair for an evening of crowd-funded publishing. Billed as “a cross between a book slam and election hustings”, nine authors had 10 minutes each to pitch to an audience who could then pledge anything between £10 and £250 in support of the book. If enough money is pledged the author writes the book and Unbound publishes it. If not, the prospective book stays on the slush pile and pledgers get their money back (or the chance to re-pledge to another book). Pledgers keep up-to-date with their author’s progress on the Unbound website.

In a dark boudoir-like room the writers took to the mic in front of about 100 people. We heard pitches, for instance, from Pete Lawrence for his memoir about founding The Big Chill festival, from Kevin Parr for his novel about an obsessive bird-watcher who turns murderous, and from Robbie Hudson and John Finnemore, two comedians who got funding for a first book—a series of letters between two gay horses during the Napoleonic wars—and now want funding for a sequel.

By bringing authors and readers closer together Unbound throws a democratic punch at the big-money publishers who monopolise the book stores. For Unbound, the pledging system is a novel way of drumming up capital before shelling out to publish a book. And pledgers get to be financially and emotionally invested in a literary project. Every pledger gets a nod in the afterword and big investors get signed editions, goodie bags and lunch with the author.

Click here to read the rest of the review at Intelligent Life’s website.